Dispelling any doubt over the significance of the upcoming 3DS, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has told BusinessWeek that the console is the company's "next handheld platform".

"We have ideas of what we want to bring to the consumer that we can't do with the current DS model", he said. "The Nintendo 3DS for us is our next handheld platform."

While this seemed likely given the fact that DS support for the 3DS has been described as "backwards compatability", this is the first official confirmation we've had that the 3DS will indeed be an all-new handheld generation, making it Nintendo's fourth after the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS.